ABSTRACT
In may, his third child, Harriet Marion—afterwards Mrs. Leslie Stephen — was born, and his wife became very ill. The illness eventually affected her mind, and Thackeray, who regarded this as only a natural sequence of the illness, which would pass away in time, when her health was restored, threw all business aside, sent his children to their grandparents at Paris. At last Thackeray was compelled to realise the truth— that his poor wife would never recover sufficiently to undertake the duties of mother and wife. She was unable to manage her life, though she took interest in any pleasant things around her, especially in music. Again, in after years, referring to The Great Hoggarty Diamond, which was composed during this period of great unhappiness, Thackeray remarked that it ‘was written at a time when the writer was suffering under the severest personal grief and calamity,’ ‘at time of great affliction, when my heart was very soft and humble.
